How to delete a directory containing multiple files and sub directories in Java using recursion?

Program Requirements

To begin with lets define the requirements:

Given a directory, delete the directory and all its contents in one go. The directory may contain

• multiple files
• multiple sub directories which further might contain sub directories or files.

Background

J2SE development kit provides the right classes to satisfy our needs. We have already discussed how a single file can be deleted in a directory using Java in one our articles How to delete a file using Java

All we need for our current requirements is to perform the delete operation recursively until all the contents are deleted. As a directory cannot be deleted if not empty, we delete its content first and when the directory becomes empty, the directory can also be deleted.

Implementation Algorithm

  1. Create a file instance with the given file path
  2. If directory then
    2.a. list all its contents
    2.b. For each content (File/Subdirectory)
         2.b.i. repeat the process from 1
  3. else
    delete the file

Java Implementation

The beauty of Java is that you can write a single method and call it within itself recursively until the entire directory is deleted. All you will need is this single method defined below.

public static boolean deleteFile(String sFilePath)
{
  File oFile = new File(sFilePath);
  if(oFile.isDirectory())
  {
    File[] aFiles = oFile.listFiles();
    for(File oFileCur: aFiles)
    {
       deleteFile(oFileCur.getAbsolutePath());
    }
  }
  return oFile.delete();
}